1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fire receiver for use in a fire alarm system in which the fire receiver and terminal devices are connected through signal lines, and in which the fire receiver calls each terminal by polling, collects predetermined information therefrom and executes a predetermined control.
2. Description of Related Art
When a fire alarm system is installed, a plurality of terminal devices are connected to a fire receiver through signal lines and different addresses are assigned to the terminal devices. Data representing the correspondence or correlation between the addresses and the kinds of the connected terminal devices, data representing a linked relationship between fire detectors and controlled devices and other data are stored in a memory of the fire receiver. It is troublesome to write such categories of data one by one in the memory of the fire receiver in the place where the fire alarm system is installed. A method has therefore been proposed in which such data is previously stored in an IC card, which is inserted in a connector provided in the fire receiver at the installation site, so that the data stored in the IC card can be fetched to the fire receiver when power supply is turned on, whereby the operation of installing the fire alarm system can be simplified.
In general, it is not always possible that all the terminal devices of the fire alarm system are connected simultaneously to the signal lines connected to the fire receiver when the fire alarm system is installed. The terminal devices are usually connected separately in several days. If 200 terminal devices per day in a total of 2000 terminal devices, for example, are connected to complete the entire installation work in a total of ten days, it is preferable in terms of working efficiency to check the connections, wiring and the like each day after the connections of 200 terminal devices have been completed.
However, the operation of storing necessary data in the above-described IC card is ordinarily performed in a place different from the place where the fire alarm system is installed, and some of terminal devices to be set each day may be frequently changed depending upon the process of the installation work. Therefore, it is difficult to previously grasp, at the place of preparation of the IC card, the concrete procedure for installing specific terminal devices each day. As a result, it is practically impossible to suitably prepare the IC card according to the installation work and to effectively check the connections, wiring or the like of the terminal devices installed each day.
Even when all the terminal devices to be installed are completely installed, there is a need to perform the operation of writing necessary data in the memory of the fire receiver at the installation site if the IC card having the necessary data could not be prepared prior to the installation. For this reason, the work for installing the fire alarm system cannot be simplified or the preparation of the IC card storing the necessary data must be awaited before the completion of setup of the fire alarm system to simplify the installation work, that is, the period for setting up the fire alarm system must be extended.